Here’s how big the iPhone is as a business, according to Bloomberg: If the iPhone were its own company, its revenues would be greater than Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Google and Microsoft.

On its own, the iPhone is the ninth biggest stock in the Dow, and has bigger sales than 474 S&P 500 companies. (Apple sold 9 million new iPhone 5S’s and iPhone 5C’s just last weekend.)

Apple sold 9 million iPhones over the weekend, a record for the company. To put it in context, we’ve charted out the company’s opening weekend sales since the iPhone 3G, which is the first time it announced opening weekend sales.

The big change for Apple this year was the introduction of the iPhone 5C, a colorful, plastic-cased iPhone. Apple didn’t break out what portion of iPhone sales were 5C, and what portion were 5S. It seems likely the new 5C model boosted sales.

Here’s why Apple’s new fingerprint scan technology called “Touch ID,” could be a boon for mobile commerce and mobile payments:

Currently, Touch ID will allow a user to authorize iTunes purchases with a quick scan of their thumb, instead of having to type in their password. It will also unlock the home screen.

Mobile commerce: But retailers want much more. The hope is for App! le to op en up the fingerprint scan technology so that it can be used for smoothing in-app purchases and e-commerce transactions.

Mobile payments: The same technology can power the use of mobile devices for “walletless” payments at bricks-and-mortar offline retail outlets. Add this to the industry-leading 435 million user credit cards Apple has on file (as well as its Passbook digital wallet app), and the 5S could act as a bridge for taking mobile payments mainstream.

The 5S will be twice as fast as the old iPhone 5 and 40 times faster than the original iPhone, according to Apple. The 64-bit A7 chip will be accompanied by a new motion-sensing coprocessor. This hardware combination will benefit certain application categories:

Photography. Improved lens and sensors are paired to Apple’s updated camera software on the 5S, creating an enhanced camera experience, including a stabilization feature, automatic editing of multiple rapid-fire exposures for a few great photos, and “dynamic to! ne mappi ng,” which can adjust picture quality (i.e., brightness, exposure) on individual parts of the image.

Let’s not forget that photography drives some of the most popular social networking and messaging apps (Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.). Photography is at the heart of the mobile consumer’s experience, and where they put a great deal of their time, money, and care.

Apple’s iPhone units could grow by 28% on a year-over-year basis this quarter, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty.

Huberty’s “Alphawise Smartphone Tracker” suggests Apple sells 34.5 million phones in the September quarter. The Street consensus for iPhone sales is in the low thirty millions.

A 28% increase over a year ago would be good considering Apple will only be selling new iPhones for about a week in the quarter. It’s also good considering Apple’s growth was at single digit levels earlier in the year.

Apple’s will never post insane 80%+ growth for the iPhone again. The market is mature, and Apple already sells a lot of phones making mega-growth nearly impossible.

But 28% is a solid, growing number, if accurate.

Morgan Stanley’s Alphawise tracker uses web search analysis and Google Trends to make a forecast. It sounds a little goofy, but last quarter Alphawise predicted 31.3 million units. Apple sold 31.2 million.

While this is good news for Apple, there’s more to the story.

Alphawise predicts a relatively massive quarter for Samsung. It’s expected to sell 47 million Galaxy phones, which would blow Apple out of the water.

Here’s a chart from Huberty that compares Alphawise estimates to actual results”

During the second quarter of the year, tablet traffic converted as well as traffic from traditional computers, while maintaining a similar average order value (AOV), according to [download page] the latest quarterly e-commerce report from Monetate. Tablet traffic converted at an average rate of 2.54%, on par with computers’ average rate of 2.56%, with smartphone conversion rates continuing to lag far behind at 0.96%, though that was an improvement from prior quarters. The three device types were more closely aligned in terms of average order values.

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Computers led with an AOV of $115.74, compared to $113.15 for tablet tablets and $112.73 for smartphones.

[Editor’s note: Monetate’s previous report covering Q1 had found tablets converting at a higher rate than computers, while data from this latest report indicates that the opposite was true for Q1. The discrepancy owes to a different random sample of clients being used for each quarterly report.]

Among tablets, the iPad continued to boast the highest conversion rate (2.6%) during the second quarter, with Android (2%) also out ahead of the Kindle Fire (1.6%). The iPad also sported the highest average order value ($114.18), outpacing Android ($101.22) and Kindle Fire ($91.84).

The iPhone re-assumed the lead in conversion rates among smartphones, just exceeding 1%, and putting some distance between itself and Android (0.88%) and Windows (0.77%) phones. i! Phone tra! ffic also ended up with the highest average order value, of $114.45, followed closely by Windows ($112.36) and Android ($109.52).

All told, smartphones (9.7%) and tablets (12.4%) together accounted for more than 1 in 5 e-commerce visits during Q2, up from about 15% a year earlier. In the past year, tablets have overtaken smartphones in terms of e-commerce traffic share, with the gap between the devices steadily increasing.

The iPad continues to dominate tablet e-commerce traffic to the tune of 90.6% share, while the iPhone also retains its lead (62.7% share) of smartphone visits.

Can you afford the new gold iPhone, at $399 for the high-end model? Or will you be forced to take the $99 deal on the plastic iPhone?

(Let’s not even mention those of you who are thinking of taking an iPhone 4S. Sure, it’s now free with a contract. But what does that say about you as a person? It doesn’t bear thinking about.)

The iPhone was already a divisive phone. Samsung has made a great business over mocking the snobbery that surrounds it. For Apple consumers, the choice has been simply, iPhone or “other” phone.

Now it’s more complicated. Especially if you’re a teenager, or a member of Harvard Business School’s Society X, or anyone else ! concerne d with status and class — which is to say, everybody.

Gold iPhones are going to be like a Gucci bag or a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses — they’re going to scream your status as one of Apple’s higher end customers, standing behind Silicon Valley’s mobile velvet rope.

Likewise, those red, blue and green iPhone 5C’s will announce their presence with a different message: “Can you spare any loose change?” They’re expected to be big in China.

The global smartphone shipments share of handset makers, especially Chinese manufacturers, has been growing rapidly at the expense of Apple, and they’ve done so by undercutting the iPhone’s premium pricing with a barrage of low-cost handsets.

Most of these cheaper handsets run Android, and because of that, Google’s platform has been increasingly asserting its will over Apple. It now controls 80% of the global smartphone market. Meanwhile, Apple’s platform share keeps falling and is currently around 13%.

Roaming confusion has already caused the NSA to “accidentally” listen in on domestic calls, but according to a report from Spiegel, the organization is capable of a lot more. The German news magazine says it has seen evidence that the NSA can tap smartphones for SMS traffic, location data, contact list information and more. The claims, reportedly outlined in internal NSA documents, specifically call out iOS and BlackBerry devices as targets, describing the ability to access iPhone data by hacking a recently synced PC. BlackBerry access seems a bit more direct, Spiegel reports, suggesting that the NSA can tap into the BlackBerry email system. BlackBerry officials told Spiegel it wouldn’t comment on the allegations, but assured the news source that it hasn’t provided the NSA with a “‘back door’ pipeline to our platform.” Regardless, it’s a haunting claim — particularly for folks that use BlackBerry devices for their heavily toutedsecurity, but considering everything the NSA has been up to recently, we can’t say we’re entirely surprised.

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.